Big companies should keep their eyes on start-ups, and not only because of the disruptive innovations they unleash. It also pays to learn from how they work. For example, at GE our new-product development efforts got a fresh infusion of energy this year from the lean start-up methods that serial tech entrepreneur Eric Ries advocates. We’ve also been inspired by an ethos we’ve seen in the world of social enterprise: the belief that if you hire smart people, they should be able to “figure it out.”